As soon as the Republicans can get Mike Huckabee out of the race the sooner they can begin to institute the new/old strategies for 2008. The Republican strategies will rely on two main points for the general election. The first will be the nation at war narrative that will require a national hero and security hawk to navigate this dangerous world we now find ourselves in. The country will need his experience and understanding of war to succeed in the global struggle against the Islamo-fascist terrorists that hate us for our freedoms. The second will be a large cash give-away in an effort to buy the election. I am not talking about the tax rebate or stimulus package, no I am referring to the recently unveiled budget of George W. Let’s look at both of these strategies and their appeal to voters in November.
The first is the same strategy George W. used to beat John Kerry in 2004. The narrative was that a real war hero was not qualified to lead the country as well as a National Guard deserter and a chicken-hawk, only George W. could lead the country during these dangerous times. Well, now they have their own war hero to continue the disastrous war in Iraq. I guess because an ex-POW says we should stay in Iraq then that concludes anymore discussion on the subject. The Rovian model of the Republican majority is based in this nation at war scenario, as long as the Republicans can continue to use the scare and fear tactics that they have refined in the two past elections they can maintain a majority. As the election approaches the threat level is already being elevated in the MSM and the Defense Department. During the summer and into the fall there will be report after report of the growing capabilities of al Qaeda and their ongoing plans to attack America. Of course these reports will be attributed to unnamed administration and defense spokespeople so they can never be checked out. The MSM will report and give them the weight of confirmed intelligence. I would not be surprised if the threat level is not elevated to its highest state in say four years.
Beginning with Mitt Romney, who withdrew from the race on Thursday, warning that he would not abet “the surrender to terror,” Republicans, including Mr. McCain and Vice President Dick Cheney, have warned darkly that the Democrats were ill-suited and ill-equipped to protect the nation, the same theme that Mr. Bush struck in his successful 2004 re-election campaign.
“I guarantee you this: If we had announced a date for withdrawal from Iraq and withdrawn troops the way that Senator Obama and Senator Clinton want to do, Al Qaeda would be celebrating that they had defeated the United States of America and that we surrendered,” Mr. McCain said at a rally in Wichita. “I will never surrender.”[1]
The war supporters are all lining up to chime in with their predictions of an all-out al Qaeda invasion if we do not stay the course and elect John McCain. Flush from their victory in Iraq we will have embolden them to once again attack America sending in waves of terrorist from across the Mexican border. They may look like Mexicans, but don’t be fooled they are terrorists in disguise. This will also help to sell the much needed security fence along the Mexican border. Brilliant
The second leg of their strategy will be the government give-a-ways that are stuffed into the 3.1 trillion dollar budget submitted by Bush. The President, a staunch critic of Congressional earmarks has sent a budget to Capitol Hill that is teeming with them. However in Bush speak an earmark is not an earmark if the President submits them. In many cases expenditures that Bush once called earmarks have turned up in his budget. Bush is once again showing us that budget constraints mean nothing to him and his fellow “fiscal conservatives”, they will continue to spend money in spite of any recession or depression the economy may be experiencing. The Republicans can now promote McCain as a true fiscal conservative who will put an end to the waste in Washington, of course they will fail to mention that much of that waste occurred during a two-term Republican administration.
Thus, for example, the president requested $330 million to deal with plant pests like the emerald ash borer, the light brown apple moth and the sirex woodwasp. He sought $800,000 for the Neosho National Fish Hatchery in Missouri and $1.5 million for a waterway named in honor of former Senator J. Bennett Johnston, a Louisiana Democrat.
At the same time, Mr. Bush requested $894,000 for an air traffic control tower in Kalamazoo, Mich.; $12 million for a parachute repair shop at the American air base in Aviano, Italy; and $6.5 million for research in Wyoming on the “fundamental properties of asphalt.”
He sought $3 million for a forest conservation project in Minnesota, $2.1 million for a neutrino detector at the South Pole and $28 million for General Electric and Siemens to do research on hydrogen-fuel turbines.[2]
Along with the built-in earmarks, the budget also includes 500 billion for defense along with an additional 200 billion to continue the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This translates to a 62% increase in defense spending under Bush. With this increased defense spending is America any safer Are our military forces stronger? According to the Pentagon they are just the opposite, our forces are over-spent and in terrible need of repair. But this will not stop the war mongers from pressing the case for more war and more spending. Who says a nation has to sacrifice during war times? Obviously not anyone familiar with the today’s Republicans.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/us/politics/09bush.html?hp
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/washington/10earmark.html?scp=1&sq=bush+earmarks&st=nyt
Monday, February 18, 2008
Republican Strategy 2008
Friday, July 6, 2007
Who’s Minding Trough?
Martindale, 43, is among a group of procurement officers struggling to keep pace with increasing demands to oversee billions of dollars in spending by the Pentagon and civilian agencies. Although she and her colleagues play pivotal roles in the government's operation, their plight has received little attention even as the government continues to expand its reliance on private companies and embarks on increasingly complicated programs .
The Defense Department's civilian acquisition workforce has shrunk by about 40 percent since the early 1990s and now has about 270,000 employees, according to Pentagon statistics and Government Accountability Office reports. Yet defense spending on service contracts increased 78 percent, to $151 billion, from 1996 to 2006, the reports said.
There are 7.5 million federal contractors, 1.5 million more than in 2002, without a corresponding increase in government officials to oversee them, said Paul C. Light, a public service professor at New York University.
"The acquisition workforce couldn't be in any more distress right now, and I know they are frustrated that they can't oversee the contracts that they have," Light said. "They are looking at the hunks of money flowing out but don't have the bodies to keep up."
The shortfall, which the government has relied largely on private contractors to fill, has contributed to cost overruns and delays, according to government reports and audits.
In the midst of the decline, the Army launched a modernization project but had "insufficient resources to staff, manage, and synchronize" the program, which includes a complex system for networking soldiers with each other, planes and tanks, the GAO found recently. The Army hired Boeing to manage the project, which has nearly doubled in cost to $163 billion.
This year, after a ship being built by Lockheed Martin went more than 50 percent over budget, the Navy acknowledged that it hadn't provided enough oversight and pledged to more than double the number of technical experts at the shipyard where the work is being done.[1]
Remember when the “Cold War” ended and all those generals were talking about peace dividends and lowering the cost of the military budget. We now know of course that this administration has spent not only the peace dividend, but also any other dividend they could find in the public coffers. As the acquisition part of the military industrial complex has grown to astronomical proportions those hired to oversee them has not. If I were a cynic I would say that this was intentional. The reason is simple any project that does not have the proper oversight has massive design issues and cost-overruns which goes straight into the contractor’s pockets. What we are seeing is the contractors policing themselves due to a lack of Pentagon overseers. History has shown that when this is the case we end up with projects like the B-1 bomber, $800 toilet seats, and the “Star Wars” initiative. As part of their lobbying efforts could those big defense contractors be trying to keep the government payroll down to keep their payrolls up? Think about it, if every project or product you bid has a 50% increase built in you could make that bottom line look pretty sweet. These guys may not be big fans of “big government”, but they don’t seem to have problem with big government contracts. Also, with more than a third of current projects being manned by the same contractors that are building the projects, can anyone be surprised that they are over-budget and have major design flaws?
How much money do we have to pour down this black hole before we realize the fruitlessness of it? The past few wars should demonstrate to us that the modern battle is not about technology. In each case we have had superior fire-power and in each case we have been defeated by a determined enemy with low tech weaponry. In the mean time, we continue to spend trillions of dollars figuring out a better way to kill our fellow humans. In a protracted urban guerrilla struggle all those nice little toys can’t carry the day. The days of lining up forces opposed to each other and going at it are over. It is time to trim down this bloated military budget and put the money into ways to break our dependency on oil, poverty eradication, and global warming. Now, I realize in the midst of an unpopular and so far badly managed war that this suggestion will seem radical and very unpopular, but as long as we continue to build this crap we will continue to have to create wars to use it. It’s like a viscous cycle and it doesn’t matter who is in office, you don’t spend trillions of dollars on this stuff and not use it.
Instead of talking about increasing the size of the military, maybe we should try increasing the size of our leader’s brains and their courage. Not the false courage that is willing to send kids to do a job they weren’t willing to do as youth; no the courage to back us away from the brink of self destruction. The more we try to hang on to this empire, the closer we get to our decline as a society. These examples of letting the foxes guard the hen house are just further proof that the end is near. The thing about greed is that there is never enough to satisfy the appetite of the avaricious.
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/04/AR2007070401424.html?hpid=moreheadlines
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